Cladonia litoralis
Cladonia litoralis is a species of fruticose lichen in the family Cladoniaceae. It was described in 2011 from the Atlantic coast of Santa Catarina State in southern Brazil. There it forms dense, convex cushions of overlapping on exposed granitic coastal rocks. It has yellowish-green, glossy squamules; small podetia with closed branch angles ; frequent brown pycnidia; and only one detected secondary metabolite, fumarprotocetraric acid.
Taxonomy
Cladonia litoralis was described as a new species in 2011 by Emerson Luiz Gumboski and Sionara Eliasaro, based on collections from the Atlantic coast of southern Brazil. In modern classifications of Cladonia, it is placed in the broad "Cladonia" supergroup. The type specimen was collected on granitic rocks at Mariscal Beach near Bombinhas, at about 3 m elevation. The holotype is preserved in the UPCB herbarium.The epithet litoralis refers to the species' seashore habitat. The original description compared the species with other cushion-forming Cladonia species. It differs from C. strepsilis in having podetia that are mostly and in lacking a green C-test reaction. It also differs from C. subcervicornis, which has corticate, cup-bearing podetia. It can be confused with squamulose forms of C. ochracea. C. litoralis usually forms convex, often rounded cushions, with smooth squamule margins and lower surfaces, and it differs in the form and internal structure of granules on the podetia.
Description
The main body of the lichen is persistent and strongly developed. It consists of overlapping squamules that build dense, convex cushions up to about wide and tall. Individual squamules are elongated and sometimes strap-like, slightly convex, and about 1.0–7.0 mm long by 0.7–1.5 mm wide. Their margins are rolled inward and range from smooth to irregularly scalloped. The upper surface is yellowish green, smooth, and glossy. The squamules lack powdery soredia and root-like rhizines. The lower surface is white to brownish and has a cobwebby texture.Podetia are common but small and whitish, about 0.4–0.8 cm tall and 0.3–0.5 mm thick. They are usually simple, only rarely branching near the tips. They lack cups, and any inner angles at branch points are closed rather than open. Most of the podetium surface lacks a cortex, except near the base; on young podetia the cortex may extend farther upward. Podetia are generally not sorediate, but they may be completely covered by shiny, cylindrical granules. Small squamules can also occur on the podetia, and new podetia may develop from these secondary squamules.
Asexual reproductive structures are frequent. The pycnidia are brown and pear-shaped, up to about 0.2 mm wide, and occur at the tips or along the sides of podetia. The conidia are colorless and slightly curved, about 7–10 × 1 μm. No sexualstructures were observed in the type material. In standard chemical spot tests, reactions were negative with C and KC. The K test was negative or sometimes turned dirty yellow, the P test turned red, and no ultraviolet fluorescence was seen. Thin-layer chromatography detected only fumarprotocetraric acid.